ASU Professor proves my point

Says the quiet part out loud (again)

In previous posts, I have pointed out that the protestors disrupting university campuses are just putting into practice what their professors teach. I gave examples. However, it is helpful when these professors confirm that I am correct from their mouths.

Here at ASU, we have a protest called the “Liberated Zone.” Our State Press reported on one ASU professor who spoke there. This professor says that the protesters are doing what they are taught to do in ASU classrooms. They are protesting how ASU police handled the situation last week when protestors violated the law and tried to build an encampment. Because they were not allowed to build the encampment and violate the law, they now insist their right to free speech was taken away (try not to laugh).

“The School of Social Transformation is its own interdisciplinary school that ASU put together on purpose,” she says, “This is what we do. This is what we teach. And yet when it is actually enacted, or they see it happening, it becomes a point of repression and suppression and violence as opposed to expression and protecting freedom.” She then went on to discuss how intersectionality applies to the situation.

This professor tells us that ASU chose the path of violence by not allowing the protestors to break the law and stay overnight. “What is the role of education,” she asks, “if not liberation?” She reduces all education to political liberation. That is the reason to go to college.

A few points. She believes (and she represents the vast majority of ASU professors in fields like the Humanities and Social Sciences) that the purpose of education is to train advocates who disrupt society in the name of the “oppressed” with the goal of “liberation.” There is no self-reflection that perhaps the way she has framed the problem is all wrong. Or that perhaps she is on the oppressive and anti-education side by encouraging these sorts of protests that are fueled by emotion and intimidation rather than rational debate.

Next, she confesses this is what she and others teach. She names her school, but there is every reason to believe this happens in many ASU schools. My own school pushes decolonizing philosophy and Native American Land Acknowledgements. My school trains “advocates” for such causes. Taxpayer money is being used for this political purpose. A good case can be made that this violates ASU policy and Arizona State law.

Last, she reduces liberation to political liberation. The context is a protest about what is happening between Israel and the Palestinians. There is no mention of Hamas freeing the hostages. What about their liberation? And what about liberation from sin? Who can save us from our own sin that that has alienated us from God?

As I’ve discussed before, people need a cause to make them feel that their lives have meaning. But not all causes are coherent. She and others have not actually identified the problem in the human condition that makes the world as it is. Therefore, they cannot propose a solution to a problem they don’t understand.